How Religious Trauma Affects Your Nervous System
When we talk about religious trauma, we often focus on the emotional and spiritual harm that comes from being indoctrinated into a high-control religion.
But what sometimes gets overlooked is how our bodies, specifically our nervous systems, respond to these experiences.
In general, when we encounter a threat, our body goes into survival mode, reacting in one of four ways: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
These responses are naturally wired into us and are designed to protect us from danger.
However, in high-control religions, the options to fight or flee are often severely restricted, making freeze and fawn the most common survival strategies.
In this post, we’ll break down each of these trauma responses and explore why freeze and fawn are particularly common in religious contexts.
We’ll also discuss the long-term impact of religious trauma and provide some specific steps you can take to support your recovery journey.
What We’ll Be Covering:
Four Ways the Nervous System Responds to Threat
When your nervous system detects a threat, it automatically activates one of four survival responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
Each of these responses serves a protective function to keep you safe in the face of real or perceived danger, but in high-control religions, the responses available to you are often severely limited.
In this section, we’ll explore how each trauma response works and what it looks like in the body.
We’ll examine why fight (confronting the danger) and flight (escaping the danger) are often suppressed in high-control religious settings.
And we’ll consider why freeze (shutting down or “playing dead”) and fawn (appeasing others to stay safe) become the primary survival strategies for many survivors of religious trauma.
Understanding these responses can help you recognize patterns in your own life and begin to untangle the ways religious trauma has impacted your nervous system’s default reactions.
Fight: Attacking the Danger
The fight response is when we perceive a threat and believe we can overcome it by confronting it directly.
In a healthy context, this can be a necessary way to defend yourself and establish boundaries.
But in high-control religions, fighting back against the perceived “threat” of harmful teachings, abusive leadership, or oppressive rules is often suppressed.
Speaking out can lead to punishment, exclusion, or even accusations of being sinful or rebellious.
As a result, many people learn early on that fighting isn’t a viable option.
How fight shows up in the body:
When fight is suppressed in religious environments, that mobilized energy has nowhere to go.
It may turn inward as chronic muscle tension, headaches, digestive issues, or persistent irritability. See 6 Ways Religious Trauma Can Manifest as Physical Symptoms for more information about this topic.
For many people, suppressed fight energy eventually finds its way back to the surface during recovery.
If you’re noticing anger emerging as you process your experience, that’s often a sign of healing.
Flight: Running Away from the Danger
Flight is the instinct to escape from danger.
In many situations, when we feel threatened, our natural response is to remove ourselves from the situation.
However, for those in high-control religions, fleeing is rarely an option.
The fear of being shunned, excommunicated, or even facing eternal punishment can make leaving feel impossible.
This often creates a sense of entrapment, where the nervous system remains in a heightened state of stress without a clear way to resolve the danger.
How flight shows up in the body:
When escape isn’t possible, flight energy often gets redirected into perfectionism, overworking, hypervigilance, or constant busyness to outrun shame or fear.
Over time, this can look like difficulty resting, anxiety spikes when you slow down, and avoidance of conversations that could trigger conflict.
Freeze: “Playing Dead” to Survive
Freeze occurs when neither fighting nor fleeing seems possible.
When we feel powerless or trapped, the nervous system may trigger a shutdown response, often referred to as “collapse.”
Instead of mobilizing energy to defend yourself or run, your body shuts down as a way to survive overwhelming fear or helplessness.
In religious trauma, freeze often manifests as:
For example, you might recall times when you sat through painful sermons or endured harmful practices in silence, feeling as though you had no control or escape.
Your body learned that the safest way to survive was to shut down and endure.
Fawn: Appeasing the Danger to Stay Safe
Fawn refers to appeasing the threat in order to avoid further harm.
This often involves people-pleasing behaviors, where you suppress your own needs, feelings, or beliefs to keep others happy and maintain your safety.
In high-control religions, fawning is particularly common because obedience and submission are often taught as virtues.
Many of us were raised to believe that being self-sacrificing, agreeable, and compliant was the path to being good or holy.
Fawning might look like:
Over time, this can become an automatic survival mechanism, making it difficult to reclaim autonomy and self-trust.
Why Freeze & Fawn Are So Common in High-Control Religions
In high-control religions, freeze and fawn responses are systematically triggered and reinforced through doctrine, culture, and consequence.
These environments are designed in ways that make fighting back or leaving feel impossible, dangerous, or spiritually catastrophic.
As a result, your nervous system learns that the only safe options are to shut down (freeze) or comply (fawn).
Over time, with repeated exposure to these dynamics, people can get “stuck” in these nervous system responses.
Even after leaving, your body may continue to default to freeze or fawn because that’s what kept you safe for so long.
Here’s how these environments specifically prime these two responses:
How High-Control Religions Cultivate Freeze
Freeze becomes the default when your nervous system registers that resistance is futile and escape is impossible.
Over time, this produces chronic emotional numbness, difficulty making decisions without external validation, and a pervasive sense of being “stuck” even after leaving.
How High-Control Religions Cultivate Fawn
Fawn thrives in environments where your value depends entirely on pleasing those in power.
The result is chronic people-pleasing, difficulty identifying your own preferences or boundaries, and a deep-seated belief that your value comes from what you do for others, not who you are.
Why These Patterns Persist After Leaving
Because freeze and fawn were survival strategies in an environment where you genuinely weren’t safe, your nervous system doesn’t just “turn them off” once you’re physically out.
Your body remembers that resisting led to punishment. That asking for what you needed led to shame. That shutting down or appeasing kept you alive.
Recognizing that these responses were adaptive—not flaws in your character—is the foundation for healing.
These nervous system adaptations are not evidence that you were weak.
Your body was simply trying to help you survive in the only way that felt accessible.
Where You Might Still Notice the Impact
These trauma responses don’t just disappear when you leave the religious group. They can continue to influence your life in ways you may not even realize:
Relationships
You may struggle with people-pleasing, setting boundaries, or trusting your own needs.
Fear of conflict or rejection might make it difficult to advocate for yourself, leading to unhealthy or imbalanced relationships.
You may also feel drawn to authoritarian figures or dynamics that mirror the control you once experienced.
Work and Decision-Making
You might feel paralyzed when making choices, fearing you’ll make the “wrong” decision.
This can stem from religious teachings that framed obedience as the only path to righteousness, leaving you unsure of how to trust your own judgment.
Perfectionism, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome can also emerge, making it hard to take risks or pursue personal goals.
Sense of Self
You may have internalized beliefs that your feelings, desires, or instincts are inherently sinful or untrustworthy.
This can result in difficulty forming a clear identity outside of the religious framework, leaving you questioning your worth, purpose, or even your ability to make moral decisions without external validation.
Physical Health & Body Awareness:
You may experience unexplained physical symptoms like chronic tension, digestive issues, or fatigue—your body still holding the stress it couldn’t release.
You might also struggle to recognize your body’s signals (hunger, exhaustion, pain) because you learned to override them in favor of spiritual or community demands.
Everyday Decision Fatigue
Small choices (what to wear, what to eat, how to spend free time) can feel overwhelming because you’re no longer following prescribed rules.
The absence of external structure can paradoxically create anxiety rather than freedom.
Conflict and Disagreement
You may automatically shut down or become intensely anxious during disagreements, even minor ones, because conflict was previously tied to spiritual consequences or relational abandonment.
This can make healthy debate or negotiation feel impossible.
Celebration and Joy
You might find it difficult to fully enjoy positive experiences or celebrate achievements without guilt, shame, or waiting for punishment.
Pleasure itself may feel dangerous or morally suspect.
Rest and Downtime
Slowing down can trigger intense anxiety because busyness was a way to outrun shame or prove your worth.
You may feel you always need to be productive to deserve existence.
Supporting Nervous System Recovery
The key to healing is recognizing these patterns for what they are: survival mechanisms you developed under extreme circumstances.
By becoming aware of them, you can begin to work through the fear and reclaim your ability to act, set boundaries, and trust yourself.
Recovering from religious trauma is about more than deconstructing beliefs. It affects your nervous system and influences how you respond to stress and interact with the world.
If you’ve found yourself stuck in freeze or fawn responses, know this: these reactions are survival strategies, evidence of how much you’ve endured.
Now you have the opportunity to heal, rebuild your sense of self, and reclaim your autonomy.
Healing takes time, but with the right tools and support, you can move from survival mode into a life where you feel safe, empowered, and free.
Recommended Reading
If you’re ready to take the next step, the resources below can help you continue this work.
- Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves—and How to Find Our Way Back by Ingrid Clayton examines how people-pleasing serves as a trauma response and offers a path toward authentic self-expression.
- No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz introduces Internal Family Systems therapy, which views all parts of ourselves—even the difficult ones—as protective and worthy of compassion.
- Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine teaches body-based techniques for releasing trauma trapped in the nervous system through Somatic Experiencing.
- Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab provides practical strategies for establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships.
And because healing is relational as much as it is educational, you may also want to access some religious harm recovery community support.
Some Possible Next Steps:
If this article resonated with you and you’re wondering where to go from here, you might consider the following options:
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